Leave Social Engineering to the Politicians.

The Nigel Farage bank cancellation Farrago is an indication of an organisation getting involved in social engineering where it has no business.

It's not the remit of banks to steer customers in a certain way, it's not their job to promote a certain political agenda or ideology. It's certainly not their job to debank customers if the customer doesn't fit their political ideology.

This is again another example of organisations overstepping the mark. Banks are not political organisations and should not be engaged in politics or promote a political ideology.

By all means say you're pro whatever cause, that you support people. But as an organisation you must support EVERYONE, irrespective of their opinions, their race, colour, creed or religion. 

It goes without saying that race and religion are protected from discrimination by law, but do we really need to add legislation to protect people from discrimination based on their opinion or ideology?

Because that's the way things are going. 

It's stupid and just adds to the cost of governance. It's an unwritten rule in the UK that we have freedom to speak freely. Yes there are caveats to that, I'm aware of, but in the main, people are free to have an opinion and should not be penalised for it. It's no business of the banks or any other Corporation whether I supported Brexit, whether I hate Jeremy Corbyn with a passion and think Boris Johnson is a dick led by his.. dick. 

None of that nor what I post here should be in the Bank's remit to affect. Their purpose is to provide banking facilities for customers and to make a profit for shareholders. Period.

Banks, Building Societies, global corporations can support whatever cause they like, but it should not impact their core business. It should not be imposed upon their customers. In fact it should work the other way round: the customers decide if they want to continue to do business with the organisation espousing views in opposition to them.

It reminds me of the housing association that stopped one of their tenants from using a wood burner at the height of the energy crisis, because it would affect the housing association's commitment to global warming and CO2 production. The tenant had made no such commitments and I'm sure no commitment was enshrined in her tenancy agreement. 

Overstepping the mark and acting as moral guardians to customers by organisations that have no business getting involved is something that needs to be stamped out immediately. 

We vote in politicians to do the social engineering and we vote for them as long as their values align with ours. With corporations we will do business with them as long as their values align with ours, not the other way round. 

There seems to be a lot of this top-down overbearing bollocks coming from several organisations. It's a recent phenomenon and I just wonder where it's coming from. Farage mentions "the institutions", by which I assume he means the educational establishment. But it goes further and is a wider problem. It'd say that the whole idea of top-down corporate parenting is coming from the WEF and other supra-national organisations. 

Organisations we do not vote for. 

Which breaks the covenant that the public have with politics: we allow those to have control over us, as long as we decide who holds that power. We vote them into office. 

We do not vote corporations into office, we do not vote bankers in to political office, we do not vote charities into positions of power either, nor the WEF. The main reason I voted FOR Brexit was because the EU had too much power over us without us having the ability to vote them in or out of power.

I don't now need the Banks trying to fill the gap, or anyone else.

  

Luuvies Go on Strike After Seeing the Future

Well, I called it several months ago: Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens a whole host of middle class occupations. 

Actors are just the first to notice that things like scriptwriting and actual acting can with some judicious tweaking of AI algorithms, be completely replaced.

Greedy corporations like Disney will not hesitate to use this new technology to generate revenue. It may well be there will be an eventual settlement, something along the lines of not using AI generated likenesses of living actors. But that doesn't preclude new original films having AI-generated scripts and AI-generated characters.

Imagine full photo-real films generated by AI from a script generated by AI. All the humans have to do is provide the AI with the idea, the premise for the film and the AI does all the rest.

Actually scratch that: The AI can look at the metrics for a series of films, the number of views, audience figures, box office returns etc. And then it can generate a script that will be most likely to generate the highest box office revenue.

All the higher-up executives need to do is install the system and then the film industry will be able to spew out film after film. Given a fast enough computer system the films could be generated within weeks or days. No more lead times measured in months or years.

The whole acting industry: Agents, executives, deal-makers, producers, directors, actors, screenwriters, all the back-room people like key grips (whatever they are) will ALL be out of a job. 

But it doesn't stop there. Stockbrokers, traders, lawyers, middle managers, artists, a whole raft of middle-class jobs will be redundant once AI takes over.

The only jobs likely to escape the takeover of AI are the intuitive jobs, the jobs that require that intangible essence of humanity. The creators, the imagineers, the forward-thinkers, those that are first in the field, or create a whole new field. 

Although how long it is before AI can out-think the creators or simulate human imagination is anyone's guess.

Whether it can imagine the infinite possibilities of the universe without proof at all is something that we can't really predict. And at that point, does AI find religion?

Media and Police Trying to Excuse BBC Celeb Noncery.

It seems the only people interested in seeing the BBC celeb caught up in the latest scandal banged to rights are the parents of the young lad in question and the public. 

The BBC, the Media and even the Police are going to great lengths to make this story go away.

The BBC failed to investigate and then did their usual incompetent excusing when the Sun got a hold of the story. 

The lad in question (I hate to call him a victim as he was paid quite well) doesn't want the fuss.

Even the Police say it's not prosecutable. Excuse me? This celebrity paid for sexually explicit pictures of a person under 18 and effectively groomed them to provide the pictures. If that was any ordinary person we'd be banged to rights, up before the beak on severe noncery charges, convicted and sent down for a few years and be on the sex offenders register for the rest of our lives.

But of course money and connections can do wonders.

The fact is, while that lad was under 18, it was illegal for anyone to solicit explicit pictures, or to groom the "child" to provide the pictures by paying money. Merely owning sexually explicit pictures of a person under the age of 18 is illegal. There is no defence.

I thought that was a straight no defence statutory offence? Did he pay a 17-year old for explicit pictures? Were those pictures in his possession? Yes? Case proven, send the nonce down.

Again, if it was any ordinary person committing the offence of grooming a minor, then we'd be banged to rights. But if you've got a bit of money you can get a super-injunction to avoid being named and you have the contacts to make even the Police scared of prosecuting you.

It stinks to high heaven.

I'm sure the celeb in question is getting the response down pat. Have the family gathered round in front of the house for the press, say they are very sorry and it won't happen again, lapse of judgement, yadda yadda, very sorry, let the public down. 

A few years in the wilderness living off that fat BBC nest egg and they'll be back on our screens again.

Just as an example of what happens to ordinary people, here's the case of the son of a friend.

He was a 21-year old that met a girl in a casino (note the adult-only over 18 venue requires adult ID and registration to get access, so you'd think it was safe to assume she was over the age of consent). 

She said she was 18 and looked 18. There was plenty of evidence she was using fake ID to get into adult venues and his story was backed up by friends of his that she presented herself as an 18-year old. They had a few dates, and did the things that adults do. Only when he didn't want to continue with the relationship did she then reveal that she was 15 and got her parents to call the Police. He was prosecuted, send down for a number of years and now is on the SOR.

Now to me, that would be an excusable scenario: the girl presents as something she isn't and only reveals her deception when he wants to break up. 

The BBC celeb I assume knew the kid was 17 and was paying him for pictures. In my mind it should fall foul of the child pornography laws as well as recent grooming legislation. 

But of course one law for thee, another law for those that can afford it.

One thing did occur to me: What's the ethnicity of the celebrity in question? 

Given the Police are reluctant to prosecute child rape cases perpetrated by certain ethic groups, is the reluctance of Police to prosecute in this case based on the ethnicity of the perpetrator?